


trapped

by sangi



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-01
Updated: 2006-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-13 15:54:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3387584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sangi/pseuds/sangi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU capture fic. Zuko captures Katara, she falls in love, and eventually escapes him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	trapped

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in 2006, and although I'm pretty sure this demonstrates my younger self's dysfunctional view of relationships as well as poor writing ability, I've posted it here again for archival purposes.

** I. CAPTURE **

He watched her carefully and slowly, stalking the movements of a loved one and a hunted one, and leaving her all alone at the same time. He was pretty sure that she didn't know he was there, and he wanted it to stay that way. She mustn't find out that he was following her through the streets of their small town at a time like this. He watched and closely observed the way her hands moved when she walked, and the way her mouth quirked up at the corners when she saw young girls playing around in the streets.

He smiled and wanted to laugh, but any sound at all might give away his position, and any sound at all might ruin what he had planned. He observed her soft hair in the light moonlight and her blue eyes (so little like his) in her face when he turned around to take a glance around on the full and empty streets of the cold nighttime hours, and he just chuckled to himself as the sky was dark and the moon glowed brightly.

'DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC,' read one sign over a brothel, which was in fact called BROTHEL, in huge capital letters. He had been there before, no doubt, but seeing the sign and the memories coming back to him again seemed to be quite a shock. And her voice as she asked for directions to the new club Morschinno (exotic, erotic) was so soft that it etched patterns of loveliness into his mind and soul, and he yearned to touch her again.

He still followed her quite aways down the streets, until she finally reached the outside of the club. At first, when he had first seen her, her outfit had quite popped, but in the chase and stalk it seemed to have not mattered anymore, but now he noticed what she was wearing again. She wore a black tank top with boots up to her knees and a skirt, hardly an appropriate for a single girl out on the town late at night, when people like him were around and they were watching her all the time.

He watched as she went through the door, and he watched as she was unsure of where she was, and he watched as she loved the club and the wonders inside. He got himself in easily, seeing as who he was. And he was in love too, but not with the decoration or the addition of everything anyone could ever muster. He looked around at the high ceiling and flashing lights, and he quickly made his way through the crowd.

She was dancing in the middle, her body like jello and her face like an angel's as men and women surrounded her, though the women she pushed away. He sidled his way up behind her and whispered softly in her ear, "Hey," and she turned around, and then turned her head back around. "What's your name, pretty?"

And she grinded her body against his, hips moving and pushing and pulling, and turned around into him, and said, "It depends. What are you willing to do to find out?"

He pushed her in front of him, leaned up to her ear, and replied seductively, "That depends too. What do you want?" and nibbled on her earlobe as she purred.

She took his hand and quickly pulled him through the crowd, pushing elbows this way and that to make room. She took him into a separate cove and pulled him close and gave him a willful kiss, in this corner of the room, and she tasted his mouth, and felt a bang over her head, and then all was black. Her sapphire blue eyes closed for a moment, then opened just to see a slight smile on his face…

 

* * *

 

** II. CAGED **

She woke up cold, thirsty, and hungry. The air around her was stale, as if she was stuck in a box somewhere. Of course, that might've been true, considering it was too dark for her eyes to see anything. She moved around a little bit, trying to find the limitations of the area that she was in.

She gasped when she realized she was only in her bra and her underwear. Katara blushed at the thought of him undressing her, but she wasn't as repulsed as she liked to be. Sniffing, 'It smells like burnt something in here.'

Her head hit the top of the box and she winced.

"Oh, so you're awake now, aren't you?" A voice called out from outside the box. Something hit the side – his foot, most likely – making the box-cage-thingy shake and almost fall over, but he must have stopped it before the side had hit the ground.

"Yes…" She said, unsure of what she was getting (had gotten) herself into.

She heard a soft laugh and could imagine his alluring face smiling and laughing. Not with her, but at her. And she blushed and wanted to cry. Her eyes started to water, and she heard him call out, "I'll be back in awhile."

Sobs that weren't heard by anybody but she herself was what she cried, and she didn't stop for a very long time. By the time she had stopped, she was horribly tired and still hungry, cold, and thirsty. She laid her head back against the wall and lulled off into a light sleep.

A kick on the side of the box again was what woke her up the second time. A voice was calling something from outside, and then something was placed into her still sleepy hands. Her eyes opened wide in realization.

A plate, with good smelling food.

"Here you go, girl. Food." The top closed again, leaving it completely dark again. She didn't even know what the food was. "So you can eat it."

She hastily picked up the fork that came along with the plate and slipped whatever was on the dark plate onto it and lifted it up to her mouth, just stopping right before it reached her lips. Setting it back down on her plate and making a clattering noise, she spoke.

"How do I know that you haven't poisoned this?" She demanded.

He laughed again, a hearty and husky sound that chilled her to the bones and make tingling sensations go up and down her spine. "Why would I want to do that, when I just got my new toy?"

She shuddered and pushed the plate as far away as she could, but she took a drink from the cup of water. She wasn't entirely hungry anymore. She had completely lost her appetite.

"I'll be back later," he started before whispering quietly, " _my pretty._ "

She cried herself to sleep again, her hands around her knees and her hair undone and her eyes hard. Her body was cold and she was cold in her heart and she just wanted to disappear. She would have killed herself had she the chance, but she had no idea how.

Her tears stained her face and she went to sleep yet again.

The third time she woke up from her deep slumber it was because she realized that she was no longer cold and her plate was gone, and someone had placed a blanket around her. She searched around her but to no avail, since all was still completely dark in the small area that she was contained in. She cried again, though she was almost sure that she was all cried out.

Her tears were those of the sad and the lonely and the alone, she was alone, deliriously alone and in her mind she was not herself. She wasn't sure anymore, she wasn't very sure.

 

* * *

 

** III. TRUST  **

Strangely enough, she did not really hold a grudge against the man that had brought all of this to her. She really didn't care enough anymore, so she let him feed her and dress her and hold her as she cried herself to sleep, and they found themselves in a very absurdly strange relationship, that was shaky.

She could explode in tears at any time, and he with anger. One was sad, alone, lonely, desperate. One was angry, irritated, wary, desperate. That still leaves the question of what they were desperate for, maybe friendship, maybe love, maybe even something more.

But they knew, and they kept it close.

One day he was wiping away her tears gently with his handkerchief, and she asked him something.

"Why do you wipe away my tears?" His hand faltered and he looked away from her, and then back, golden eyes meeting cerulean blue, and a quiet statement passed in between.

He walked away from her and set down the handkerchief on a table near the cage that he had moved her to. He laughed suddenly, and she almost jumped up – he had caught her off guard. "I don't know," he said, "I don't know."

One day he walked up to her cage and sat down in front of it with a book, and he started to read fairytales to her, as if she was a small child. She knew she wasn't a child, and he knew it too. But he read her stories of princesses and princes, frogs and witches, wizards and happily ever afters. Somehow she knew –he knew it too- that they would never turn out like that.

There were many days like this, that they spent in companionable silence, looking at the wall, or when he read to her, or when they talked about things. She never asked why he took her, why it had been her, and he never told her why he took her, and he never told her why it had been her that he had chosen.

Another day came when he walked up to her cage again, but this time he had no book with him, no newspaper, nor anything else. He opened up her cage with the keys attached to his belt, and held out his hand.

She took it.

He led her to a room that was meant to be a place to dance. She looked around in wonder, remembering her days as a child and her ballet classes.

She looked at him and he simply said that she was meant to dance.

She smiled knowingly. She spun around and smiled. He held out his hand again and she took it, just like the last time. He spun her around in circles to the soft classical music in the background, and that smile that she had placed on her face didn't fade just as the circles she was spun about in didn't cease, and finally, when they were both exhausted out of their mind from the circling that they had been doing, she fell back on the floor and pulled him along with her.

And again, as times before and times after, she woke up later in her confined space.

Another came and went, and so it went for so long that she had lost a whole bunch of her mind and just couldn't really tell when it was anymore. They didn't dance, they didn't talk, and he didn't come to visit her except to feed her. She wasn't real sure what she had done wrong, but it didn't really matter to her all that much.

But there came a day when she guessed that he had forgiven her, and he held out his hand (again and again and again) and she almost took it, but she hesitated.

"Do you trust me?" he asked her and she smiled confidently, taking his hand in hers and pulling him along to the room she had once been in.

** IV. BEGINNING  **

One day when it was raining and she was bored, just listening to the sound of the water falling softly on the ground from inside her space in the small cellar area, she sang. She sang a song that her mother had sung to her when she was small and her mother was still alive, along with the soft melodic rhythm of a music box that she had once as a child.

He wasn't home, she already knew that. She was sitting alone in her space. Her voice did echo inside the whole house, and she sang, she sang like a beautiful mockingbird.

She sighed, though, discontent. Sometimes she was homesick and she just really had this desire to go home, to tell her family she was alright. To tell them that she was sorry. Other times she really enjoyed being here, no matter how twisted it sounded. This was a weird spot she was in, and there were so many pathways before her. She just didn't know what to say to one question: which way to go?

She wasn't sure. She really wasn't sure.

Her mind unconsciously knew the words and the tune to the song, so while she had been pondering things over her mouth had still been singing the song over and over again. She shook her head and let her mouth rest for a minute, going back into the inner workings of her brain.

She liked having his company. It wasn't his fault that he was obsessed with her or something and brought her here. He was an okay person, once you got past his temper, jealousy, and so on. But at the same time she really wanted to know why she was here.

Desperately, she wanted to know why he kept her down here, and then sometimes brought her up. She could easily escape, but everytime the thought crossed her mind she forget it. It was something to ponder on a rainy day, like this one.

She heard a door creak open and then close upstairs, and she suddenly sat up.

He walked downstairs and sat on his chair, not far from her box-cage.

She looked up at him hopefully, and he broke down. Unlocking her cage with keys from his belt, he led her by her hand back upstairs to the dance floor. She was meant to dance and they did it together.

From his point of view, he saw a poor girl who was _his_ now, and would always be his. But he knew this wouldn't last forever, and that she eventually would have to go away. Go back home.

But for now, they were dancing together, _together,_ and that was how it was meant to be done.

She looked up at his face from time to time to see a stoic expression. This puzzled her every day when they dance, because his face never changed. He was always looking straight ahead, his chin jutting out right over her head. He never looked down at her or through the window.

It was as if he had completely memorized the dance moves.

This was all until one day. It was sunny, which was an unusual for a place like this. They had just arrived at the dancing room, and now the music had started. The overwhelming silence of voices bothered her.

She wasn't really paying attention to what she was doing. Her foot faltered; but he carried her along. This really didn't work out and before she knew it, they were on the ground and she was above him. She knew she was light enough – much lighter than before she came here – so that she wouldn't hurt him, but she found herself captivated by his amber eyes.

Both of them unwillingly leaned their faces into the others, and he stopped. He stopped and look into her cerulean orbs, seeing if they still wanted this, and with some encouragement from the wanting in them, he leaned forward and captured her lips with his. It wasn't his first kiss and it definitely wasn't hers either, but they were nervous enough that it almost felt like it.

Several minutes passed where quick breaths were taken in between hurried and rushed kisses, and they finally needed to break apart to breathe in deep. She looked at him and slowly rolled away. He stood up and brushed off his pants, then offered his hand to her.

Katara took it and Zuko pulled her up, and walked her back down into the dusty basement. He locked her in her cage silently and fled back upstairs.

_ 'This,' _ she thought to herself, _'is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.'_

 

* * *

 

** V. MIDDLE  **

After a month, she decided that this was not the relationship she thought it would be. He hadn't kissed her, let alone _touched_ her, since that day. Every day he had come down to give her the meals, and then quickly left. While she slept he picked up the trays, and she never saw him except for that.

She thought about this in her spare time. She had a lot of spare time now, since he didn't come down to visit her. Sometimes Azula, the cat he had, would come to see her and she would tell it stories. Stories that her grandmother had passed down to her when she was a little girl, before she had passed away. It was a long, long time ago…

_ "Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there was a princess. This princess' name was Katara, and she was the fairest of them all." She gave her granddaughter a smile and Katara giggled happily and clapped her hands, egging her grandmother to go on. "But one day, Katara ran across a poor man on the side of the road. Seeing how Katara was a kind and nice ruler, she took him into the castle.  _

_ "Katara looked after the poor man every day, since he was sick. She pressed rags with water to his forehead when he had a fever, and soothed him when he had nightmares.  _

_ "But one day, the man woke up. He had no recollection of what had happened in his life before, so Katara let him stay in the palace as her guest. They became good friends.  _

_ "After about a year, Katara was seventeen and the man was eighteen or so, a royal party rode on horseback with carriage to the palace. They asked Katara if they had seen the prince, who had gone missing a year ago.  _

_ "They instantly recognized him as the prince, and they took him back into the family. The prince and Katara ended up marrying and living happily ever after."  _

_ 'Too bad,' _ Katara thought to herself, _'there aren't many happy endings here.'_

He came in a day later, looking at her warily. She looked back at him with anger, partly at being left alone in a cage for so long. She was cold inside without his humanly warmth. Though she may not have wanted to admit it, she had really missed him. Even though he was a man who kidnapped her for unknown reasons, she had missed his company.

He leaned down in front of her cage and looked her in the eye. "We," he cleared his throat here, "shouldn't have done that."

He turned away from her and faced the wall. "We should just be friends."

She closed her eyes to try and keep the tears from falling. She reached her hand out towards him, but it fell limply to her side. In the distance she heard yelling and then a door being kicked down.

"Come out! This is the police!"

 

* * *

 

** VI. ENDING  **

She sat on the accusatory side with her family and her lawyer beside her, looking solemnly at the ground. She didn't want this to happen. She didn't want this to happen. Maybe if she repeated it in her head for long enough she could make it all go away and she could just _dance_.

"Katara?"

But then again, maybe not.

Katara stood up from her seat and walked towards the stand. Her legs dragged against the ground, and she kept repeating her mantra inside of her head. _She didn't want this to happen. She didn't want this to happen._ _This was not going to happen._

What was the point?

Sitting or standing or whatever she was doing up there, she faced the jury and sadly looked over their faces. Some were impatient to get this over with and some were as sad looking as she was. Sighing and turning her mouth back towards the microphone, she told her whole story, excluding the parts they definitely did not need to know.

_ She didn't want this to happen. She didn't want this to happen. It happened anyways… _

_ They were dancing again. Her hand was in his and the other on his shoulder, with his free hand resting lightly on her waistline. She giggled as she pulled him along, wearing a beautiful ball gown. He was in formal attire too, somehow.  _

_ At the sound of her giggle his normally stoic face almost cracked a smile, but he quickly corrected it.  _

_ Step, one two three. Step, one two three.  _

_ Pulling him along, he let her head. He let her lead the dance, though he knew it, because he knew that it helped her anyways. It helped her, and that was all that matters.  _

_ She giggled again, pushing her mouth closer to his…  _

"Katara? Katara? Are you listening to me, girl?" She shook her head out of her reverie and looked at her lawyer and sighed again.

"Yes, yes I am."

Her lawyer looked suspicious, though. "You should go home and get some rest." She took Katara's hand in hers and looked her in the eyes ( _like so long ago…),_ "Go ahead. Everything will still be here in the morning."

She went home and slept in her own bed. She brushed her teeth and brushed her hair and took a long, hot shower. But it wasn't what she wanted.

"Guilty."

 

* * *

 

** VII. FREE **

"I want to visit him."

Her mother sighed and shook her head lightly. "Katara, I'm not sure this is a good idea. I mean, you've just got settled back down and…"

"I know, mother, I know. Just, please, alright? I need closure." _I need a happy ever after._

"Fine, Katara, you can go." She kissed her daughter on the cheek. "Just be careful, okay?"

"Hey, kid, you have a visitor." Zuko looked up with weary eyes from his hard cot at the man in front of him. "Well, weren't you expecting someone? It is visitor's day, after all."

He walked him to the room and sat him down in the chair. He left before Zuko got a chance to look through the transparent glass, or else he would've refused the visitor. But he did look through the glass after the man had left, and wanted to scream.

It was her.

Her with her long brown hair and pretty blue eyes, it was her with dance steps so much better than his. It was her, with whispered words and passionate kisses, it was _her_ , with her mentions of happily ever afters.

He stuck his hand on the glass, and hers rose up to meet it. Through the talking hole on the screen he heard her whisper, "Good luck."

He whispered back. " _What's your name, pretty?"_

Closure.

She stretched her arms out behind her head, taking in the view of the green grass and rolling hills, and even the ocean not so far off. She sighed and looked back up at the neverending sky, and then looked back down at the neverending ocean.

She smiled lightly, sadly, and looked away.

Katara was finally free.

But she missed being trapped.


End file.
